Using Mentoring Enactment Theory to Explore the Doctoral Student-Advisor Mentoring Relationship

The purposes of this study were (a) to develop a new measure to assess doctoral advisees' use of relational maintenance behaviors with their advisors, and (b) to examine both advisees' (n = 636) and advisors' (n = 141) perceptions of their mentoring relationship using mentoring enactment theory (MET; Kalbfleisch, 2002). The results of principal-component analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, Pearson correlations, and a MANOVA indicate that advisees and advisors have similar perceptions of what behaviors advisees engage in to maintain their mentoring relationships. These behaviors are appreciation, tasks, protection, courtesy, humor, and goals. In support of MET, positive relationships were generally found between advisees' use of relational maintenance behaviors and advisors' provision of career support and psychosocial support in both the advisee and the advisor samples. However, these relationships were generally not found when conducting dyadic data analyses. Moreover, advisees' use of relational maintenance behaviors was not dependent on their biological sex.